


no, yes

by angelheartbeat



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Not Happy, Shooting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 19:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16838677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheartbeat/pseuds/angelheartbeat
Summary: "Yes," she says, whenever he's around."No," she says, after he's gone.





	no, yes

**Author's Note:**

> this is not a happy fic  
> it is also not a good one
> 
> also theres been like a million fics w this exact plot but lets do it again why dont we
> 
> bon voyage cherubs

"No," she says, when they arrive at her door and plunge her into the depths of another reality with a few short words. Its not feasible that in this life, in this world of truths and fact and familiarity, something so impossible could be her new existence. He cannot be gone. He is not the type of man who goes - he is the type of man who makes stupid jokes, and roleplays as criminals, and eats sour candy for every meal (peppering in the odd vegetable at her consistent request). He is the type of man who tells her she's beautiful when she's stress-braiding and allows her to organise his life into neat compartments and kisses her first thing in the morning even when her breath tastes awful. He is not the type of man who dies.

"Yes," she said, when he first asked her if she was excited to join his precinct. She was still trying to shake his friend's comment out of her mind, but he was handsome, and his curls were everywhere, and the mess on his desk made her fingers twitch but when he cracked a joke she couldn't help but laugh. Of course she was excited to join the precinct. It was a new opportunity, a new stage in her life, a new partner who sat across from her and teased her about the calculator she keeps in her purse - you never know - and who she could instantly tell would be part of her life for a long, long time.

"No," she says, when her captain asks her if shes okay. He thought she'd say yes - she's always trying to prove she's strong, she's just as tough as anyone else, but this is different. This isn't too much hot sauce or a pull-up competition or some other triviality. This is the new emptiness in her life. She will not just put this away, she will not hide from the world and pretend like nothing has happened. She will hold her head high in pride for her husband's bravery, but she knows that they know that she's not okay, so why lie?

"Yes," she said, when he looked at her with such innocent hope on his face, when he asked in a hushed tone if she liked him. It was all so childish, but she couldn't lie. His emotions were always splayed across his features, so easily readable, and she thought maybe she'd fall straight to hell if she tore the hope out of his eyes. The situation was ridiculous. He had been so sweet - always so thoughtful, so kind, even if his thoughts played out to be nightmares - she couldn't exactly pretend like she didn't like him. 

"No," she says, when they tell her she needs to take time off work. She's been messing up her paperwork, making sloppy mistakes that the old her would never tolerate, and that he would never have let slip, but she will not stop working. Work is the only thing that keeps her going. If she doesn't think about perps and interrogations and filling out forms, the only thing she will think about is him announcing his name, his badge number, the bullet that struck his chest and lodged in his lungs. If she doesn't force herself to move, move, move, she will sit and stare at the empty desk across from hers until she runs out of air to breathe. She doesn't want to go home. Home is empty, home is stifling, home is eerily silent. When she does go home, she watches Die Hard and mouths his favourite lines.

"Yes," she said, when their boss asked if they could work together with no faults. They find a fault, though - a stupid argument over a stupid mattress where they were both stupid and stubborn. She thought maybe this would be the end, that the best thing to happen to her would be over for no reason other than bedding. She thought maybe they'd ruined their jobs over nothing more than a stupid fight. But then he smiled at her with those soft brown eyes, and told her he was willing to change, even for just a stupid mattress, and something clicked in her heart that confirmed that this was the man she would spend the rest of her life with.

"No," she whispers at the funeral, her throat closing up with unwelcome tears. It all seems so small. Her friends embrace her when they can, even though she knows they're hurting just as badly as she is, and she hugs them back each time. His funeral is too small, its all too small and too real. If he were still around, he'd be complaining that he didn't have a cooler sendoff, that he wasn't turned to ash in an explosion rather than a crematorium, that he wasn't returning as a ghost to haunt the precinct rather than being handed to her in a jar thats altogether too small. It can't be all thats left of him. She doesn't go home that night. She wanders around the city, instead. She visits everywhere she remembers them kissing, every date spot he ever took her to. She gazes up at the stars that are too, too small, and tries not to think about what comes next.

"Yes," she whispered when he was down on one knee, and it was silly and goofy and so wonderfully, perfectly him that she couldn't imagine it any other way. She knew she was going to cry the second she turned around and saw him, but that didn't stop the happiness from leaking out of the corners of her eyes and staining her face with marks. Their friends all cheered when they broke the news, slapping their backs cheerfully and raising glasses in their honour. She knew she would never get sick of feeling a band around her finger from then on, nor of holding him close and kissing him gently, that she'd promised her life to a whirlwind of a man, and he'd promised to bring her along in the storm.

"No," she says when she learns the love of her life has died, because there is no reality in which Jake Peralta's existence can be quelled, not by a gun nor by a man nor by the curse of life itself.

"Yes," she said that day on the street, in a dress lent by a friend, with her mentor blessing her union and her new husband looking more handsome than he ever had, because there is no reality in which Amy Santiago would not want to be with Jake Peralta for the rest of time.

But she never got that chance.

**Author's Note:**

> ahhh that was incoherent  
> hopefully it was understandable enough but ngl its 2am at this point idc
> 
> leave a comemnt if u want me to fckin uhh write more b99 angst babey  
> or if u jus think this was neato


End file.
